The Queen's Men Read online

  “And that is surprising how?”

  Penyngton seems taken aback at Walsingham being so obtuse.

  “Why, the Flemish are good with cloth, and wood, sir, not water! Furthermore, though, I saw that the two men do not like each other. I recall that from when I met them to discuss the works, and I very nearly told them the task must go elsewhere, and would have done so, had Master Honrighe not proved so insistent.”

  “So you have met Henk Poos? The man who is building the lock?”

  “I have indeed, sir. A most unusual gentleman in our trade, for he is just that: a gentleman, such as yourself.”

  Walsingham dips his hand into his bag and in a moment has Mistress Teerlinc’s limning.

  “Is this him? Is this Henk Poos.”

  Penyngton peers close.

  “Why, yes, sir!” he marvels. “That is him! The very spit!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Isle of Sheppey, Kent,

  the second week of February 1578

  It is just past the old feast of Candlemas, early February, and still raining, when Dr. John Dee and his assistant, Roger Cooke, stand with their boots in the water’s edge, their backs to the sea, and study once more the dismal gray lump of mud and weed that is the Isle of Sheppey.

  “If there exists a more dismal place in all Her Majesty’s kingdom,” Dee says, “then I am yet to hear of it.”

  “Likewise Her Majesty, sir,” Cooke tells him, “or she’d’ve sent us there instead.”

  Cooke believes the Queen has sent them here to Shurland Hall as a punishment for the hole that Dee blew in the Tower’s curtain wall. Perhaps he is right. But Dee reminds him that the Queen’s father and the Queen’s mother spent a delirious summer here, away from London during a plague year, just before their ill-starred marriage.

  “Never came back, though, did they?” Cooke points out.

  “True,” Dee concedes, “but that is not because they did not like the place.”

  They have brought with them from the Tower all the apparatus surviving their last efforts to create Greek fire, but they cannot get the thick black ooze of the naft to burn, even slightly.

  “I believe we will have to subject it to a process of refinement,” Dee supposes.

  “Purify it, is it, sir? Right oh.”

  Cooke loves the process of purification because it will allow him to pass his time around the flame of the burner in the alchemical workshop that they have created in one of the stone barns just to the south of the hall, with a slate roof, that looks out into a courtyard which itself has become a hive of purposeful activity. In one corner is the workshop of Her Majesty’s master cooper, who is sent them from Greenwich and is at work on a species of double-walled barrel Dee believes will cope with great pressures from the bellows that the thick-armed saddler with thumbs of steel is making from the pile of sheets of well-tanned oxhide in the workshop beside his. And a smith has been sent, too, down from Ripon, in the North, who despite hardly being able to understand English as it is spoken in the south of the country is able to follow Dee’s complicated instructions to within the fraction of an inch, and has, he thinks, perfected Dee’s design for the one-way valve, and a stand for it. The coming together of these industries in such an isolated spot has created a curious camaraderie, so that even in February the cooper, smith, tanner, and their boys are to be found gathered about the fire in the smithy, speculating on the true purpose of their shared endeavor, and making bets on the likelihood of its success.

  “But for the love of God, Master Cooke,” Dee tells him, “and of your own skin, and mine, please be careful this time.”

  Cooke dabs a knuckle to his cap and scurries away to unpack the rest of the new glass dishes they have been sent, wrapped in wood shavings and smuggled over the sea from Antwerp, which he is keen to get to work on chipping and cracking and staining with soot.

  But he is destined for disappointment, for the very next day, on the very first attempt at distillation, they draw off what Dee believes they are looking for: a strong-smelling extraction that when held up to the light seems to make the air above it dance. A lighted splint makes a single spoonful of the liquid go up with a tiny woof, after which it burns with a settled yellow flame and a fat tendril of black, evil-smelling smoke that for a short while makes them both feel sick.

  The problem is that this single spoonful has come from a cupful of the black sludge in the barrel, and after that first spoonful what they then manage to draw off from the cupful will not burn unless it is heated to a high temperature—impossible aboard a ship, say—and the fractions that come out of the condenser after that, while still interesting, suggest earthier applications than Greek fire.

  “I fear we will have little more than a cupful from the whole barrel,” Dee tells Sir Thomas Kemp, master of Shurland Hall, whom he knows to be in touch with Sir William Cecil.

  “But it will work, won’t it? You will be able to produce Greek fire? I can inform Lord Burghley that the price is worth it?”

  “That must depend on the price,” Dee supposes, “but there is definite potential. I will combine that which I have drawn off with the other elements necessary, and once the pump is fully trustworthy, we will try it.”

  “On the beach?”

  He means the strand of mud that stinks of fish guts.

  “Such as it is, yes.”

  The system Dee has devised—larger in scale than that which burned the crane on Tower Quay—shows great promise. Practicing with just seawater in the barrel, which is itself buried in the mud, they have had four boys on the bellows, and though the hoses swell and writhe like foul leather snakes, they have so far held, and with Dee’s newly devised nozzle, they have projected a stream of water that would shoot over the roof of any medium-sized parish church with height to spare, were there one to hand.

  The next day they set about making a single barrel of the concoction Dee believes is most like Greek fire, and when it is done, they fill the reservoir barrel with all they have of it, and seal it up with fat hoops of iron, and bury it in the beach with its two hoses coming out of the ground as if a giant were stitching up the earth, and they attach one end to the bellows and the other to the nozzle on its fabricated stand, which must be dug into the beach, and then they wheel an old cart down to the tideline and stand waiting for the sea to rise.

  When at last it does, and the water rises to the cart’s axles, Dee gives the signal, and the boys set to work on the bellows, and with that same distinctive noise of ten swans rising from choppy water, the first hose swells and struggles to escape, and there is a curious noise from the buried barrel and some spectators take fright and run. But then the second hose begins to twitch and swell and then there comes the moment of truth: Dee releases the catch, the match fuse swings into place just as the first whoosh of trapped air is replaced by the liquid, and an arc of flame shoots across the water to engulf the cart. Everybody throws their hands up in fright or celebration.

  “Like a fucking dragon!” Cooke shouts.

  But it is over very soon. The lack of contents in the barrel means the spurt of liquid falters and fades and splashes across the mud like an old man’s late-night urination.

  Despite himself, Dee smiles.

  “Look, Doctor!” Cooke calls. “It is still burning!”

  The sand, and the cart and the sea all around it, is still alight. The water itself is afire.

  “Go and try to put it out,” he tells Cooke.

  “Not likely!”

  Dee does it himself, wading into the frigid sea to scoop a hatful of brown water onto the burning surface. The flames continue to writhe. He scoops more, and hurls it onto the cart, with no effect. He has made it, he thinks. He has made Greek fire.

  He feels no joy, he feels only fear. He has created a terrible, terrible weapon, one that could change the course of the world. That will burn the flesh of men, women, and children; that will roast them alive; that will turn great cities to cinders; libra
ries to ashes, life to death. It is as if he has reawakened and ushered into the world an old species of being long since presumed dead—Thanatos, the God of Death—to walk the surface of the earth, bringing nothing but death and destruction.

  Thank God, he thinks, that that is the last of it.

  * * *

  Robert Beale comes to the Isle of Sheppey two days later, having heard the news.

  “It could not have come at a better time,” Beale tells him. “The day after we heard word from Gembloux.”

  “Gembloux?”

  “The Duke of Parma’s army has crushed the Hollanders. It is the end of them, that is for sure. All the Low Countries will soon be under the Inquisition.”

  Dee exhales.

  “So news of your Greek fire is very welcome. Even Sir William Cecil himself managed to smile when your name was mentioned.”

  “Then I am to be permitted home?”

  Beale falters.

  Dee sighs.

  “Christ, Robert, have I not done enough here?”

  “You have, John, you have. No one can fault you.”

  “But?”

  “But there is something else with which Her Majesty needs your help.”

  “She need only ask,” Dee says, because that is true. He would do anything for the Queen—even, if she asked, remain on Sheppey—but as he is thinking this, he feels the grip of queasiness. My God, he thinks, I do this every time: he assumes they call on him because they need him for his knowledge of mathematics, or the language of the angels, or his expertise as to the stars, and it always ends up with him involved in a task more suited to a goatherd or a dong farmer. It is a punishment, he supposes, visited upon him for pride.

  Beale coughs and clears his throat. He looks tired, Dee thinks.

  “It is somewhat sensitive,” Beale admits, looking around in case they are overheard.

  Well, Dee thinks, that sounds more interesting.

  “May we take a walk?”

  They walk down to see the blackened bones of the cart and grimy sand. They can still catch the whiff of the naft even above the timeless smell of the sea. Beale shows him one of Nicholas Hilliard’s limnings of the Queen.

  “Is this Points’s?” Dee asks. “My god, he is good, isn’t he? But look: he has given her a blemish. Bess will not like that, not at all.”

  Beale explains that the painting is not of the Queen, but of Ness Overbury. Then he explains his proposal, and when he is finished, Dee is unsure he has understood the scheme.

  “You are insane,” he says.

  Beale looks thunderously upset.

  “In which article?”

  “In the whole thing. No one will believe it.”

  “We hardly need convince a soul that she is the Queen against their will. So few people actually know the Queen; so few people have access to her person, and those who might detect she is not Her Majesty, or who we believe might be unsympathetic to our aims, she can send from her presence at whim. So long as her councillors remain true to her, then that is enough for anyone.”

  He is right there, Dee supposes.

  “What of her ladies of the bedchamber?” he asks. “They must know her intimately. Dress her and nurse her when she is sick and so on?”

  “She may pick and choose, surely? She might pick a new lady of the bedchamber, someone who does not know her so well, or someone inclined to our cause. Mistress Frommond, say.”

  “Ah,” Dee says. “Mistress Frommond. And is she… involved?”

  “She is,” Beale says, though there is a flicker of hesitation to suggest he lies.

  “And this Ness Overbury is willing? It is a deadly serious undertaking.”

  “She is. There is something about her. If she had been born a man, she might have achieved anything: become a bishop, say, or discovered the Northwest Passage, or both. I cannot describe her.”

  “She sounds— You sound—”

  “What?”

  “Very taken. With her?”

  Beale flushes, but he does not deny it.

  “It is not about how I feel,” he says, and Dee half believes him.

  He thinks for a long moment.

  “How will it end, do you think?” he wonders. “Suppose the Queen lives until she is a hundred. Will you have Ness waiting there all that time?”

  Beale has not thought of this.

  “She might go back to her normal life…” he begins. His voice tails off. Dee sees that Beale does not want her to go back to her normal life, of course. He wants her in his. And how can Dee blame him for that? But this is a dauntingly risky tactic to get a woman into bed! It makes Dee admire Beale all the more.

  “And you would want me to do what exactly? Teach her as I taught Her Majesty? I was not her only tutor you know. Roger Ascham must take some credit. Though I can see there might be a problem recruiting him.”

  Ascham has been dead ten years.

  “Ness can already read and write—her handwriting is passable, but Her Majesty’s hand is much changed in recent years anyway—and she has a little Latin, but no Greek. Or French or Italian.”

  “So marriage to Anjou is out of the question? Good.”

  “She need only know some geometry, a little algebra, the basics of astronomy and astrology, philosophy, theology—”

  “But this would have to be done in the strictest secrecy,” Dee thinks aloud. “If word got out—a whisper even—the suspicion of a suggestion of a word got out, then it would all be for nothing. And if Bess discovered what you are about with Ness, my God—that does not bear thinking about.”

  Though that is what they both now do. The men involved would be hanged, drawn and quartered; the women would be burned at the stake.

  “And supposing the scheme lay undiscovered until the moment—God forbid—the Queen dies. Queens do not die alone. There would be more physicians and bishops than you might shake a stick at, all looming over her, holding her hand and smelling her breath. And Mary of Scotland will surely have her placemen—Hatton, for example—waiting to bring her word the moment Bess is dead.”

  “New doctors may be found. New bishops.”

  Dee shakes his head to clear it. It is a foolish scheme, yet Beale is almost managing to make it sound if not sensible, then at least possible.

  Dee asks if Beale believes in the Divine Right of kings and queens. Beale looks down at his hands.

  “Do you?” he asks, looking back up at Dee.

  “I believe in Her Majesty’s Right,” Dee tells him.

  “But not Mary of Scotland’s?”

  Dee takes his point.

  “And what have Walsingham and Cecil said?”

  Beale says nothing.

  Ahhh, Dee thinks. Here we come to it.

  “They want no official part? They want to be able to deny knowledge?”

  “Precisely.”

  What a pair of shits, Dee thinks. Letting Beale take the risk while they reap the rewards. But then he thinks: There are some benefits he might reap that they cannot. My God, if Beale guides Ness through this, and she becomes Queen, then he—Beale—might ask of her anything he wants. He could become Ness’s Lord Treasurer! Her husband! King. Then what would Walsingham say?

  He starts to laugh and looks at Beale afresh.

  “So what is your plan?” he asks.

  And with that, he realizes, he is become part of it.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Tower of London, last week of February 1578

  It is dawn on the last bitingly cold day of February, with a skim of ice turning the Tower’s moat the color of spilled milk.

  “It is almost inviting, isn’t it?” Sir Christopher Hatton says. “You could dive right in.”

  “Be my guest,” Francis Walsingham invites him.

  They have arrived by chance together at the Lion Gate, both well wrapped against the cold, but Walsingham feels very homespun next to Hatton, who is done up like a peacock in royal blue, with gold and silver thread through his cl
oak and cap; his beard oiled and trimmed to a point.

  “You are very brightly turned-out for the Tower?” Walsingham comments.

  “I am summoned to Whitehall later,” Hatton tells him. “By Her Majesty. After being too sick to celebrate her birthday last year, this year she wishes to mark the date with due ceremony.”

  “Ah, yes. I had forgotten you are become a party planner!” Walsingham tells him. “At last a job for which you are qualified! And will there be some dancing, do you suppose? A galliard or two, maybe? A pavane, perhaps?”

  Hatton flushes.

  “I am glad you are recovered strength enough to mock me, Master Walsingham. I quite feared for your life this last month or so, and whenever I met your man Robert Beale, he, too, looked drained of life. I feared it might be something contagious.”

  Walsingham is carrying a new packet from Arthur Gregory, the man set to watch over Beale and his scheme, and he reminds himself that he must open it and read it, if only to make the money he pays Gregory seem worth it. He is also carrying a message from the clerk of city works, who reports that he has personally been to every worksite in the city, whether commissioned by the board or not, and has found no sign of Saelminck, nor Hank Poos, nor anyone who had worked with him, nor indeed many laborers from the Low Countries, for they have mostly—along with Garrett Honrighe—packed up and gone home for the winter. He is not sure whether to be encouraged to hear this or not. Can the Guild of the Black Madonna only work in the summer months? He doubts it, but by God that would make his life easier.

  The gate is opened, and Walsingham yields precedence to Hatton, who is, Hatton reminds him, a knight of the realm, with precedence, and they walk in silence while Walsingham costs him by the inch: just shy of forty pounds, he thinks, including boots and hat and sword. Where is he getting that kind of money? What was it that Cecil had said? A new venture with one of the merchant adventurers, perhaps? Or was it just Frobisher? Frobisher and that worthless ore that he brought back? Perhaps that is it. He will have to set a man on him. In fact, why not Gregory? He smiles at the symmetry.